Pepper looked in the box and found five squirming kittens, so new their eyes were still shut.
Before I went to graduate school for writing, I spent five years working as a veterinary technician, and much of the animal-related scenes in the book are based on that experience. (We did have a dog escape from our kennel who showed up a week later in its owner’s backyard missing a tail! We did have a woman who brought in a dog to be checked for snake bites along with a tiny baby snake in a baggie, chopped to pieces.)
The reason I included this scene where Pepper first assists with a euthanasia and immediately moves on to caring for kittens is because working in a busy clinic often means you have to move from a room of grieving owners to a new puppy visit with no time between—it’s work that requires the ability to compartmentalize. Compartmentalization is necessary and healthy sometimes, but it is possible to be too good at compartmentalization, and I think most of us have moments where we compartmentalize an experience because it’s easier than processing it.
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